Lol thanks my friend, and no worries 🙂

Thanks, glad you liked the video! Monitoring is hard to recommend as it’s such a personal preference. Best I can recommend is set a budget and check out as many sets of monitors and/or headphones as you can. Bring with you any music you have made or mixed, and tracks you know very well. It sounds dumb but you’ll know what sounds right to your ears when you hear it. That’s what you buy. After that it’s just getting to know them. That’s why many mix engineers will bring their monitors/headphones with them if they are going to work in another studio. In time you get to know your monitors/headphones like the back of your hands. And remember, Andrew Scheps headphones of choice are a $100 pair of Sony’s. 🙂

@EverythingMusicRecording Hey Thanks for putting in the effort to type it out I appreciate it I'm thinking about buying the Edifier MR4.It's budget friendly,I just want as much a studio monitorish speaker as possible for giving my live feedback while I play and then I'll mix it on my DT-770 What do you think?

Lol glad you learned something and got a laugh Darwin 🙂

It can get overwhelming at the start, yes. And also later down the line, yes. Haha, there is just so much to consider, but if i may, the ONLY thing that really matters is: Make good music. That really is it. Just consider all the mainstream, heard it a million times before, generic, boring music recorded in the most expansive studios with the most lusted after consoles and microphones and then there are records who blow your mind or bring you to tears or both, who got recorded on a 4 track tape recorded with just a human being, his instrument(s), set up in a room with no acoustic treatments or nothing, it hisses and it goes against all the "rules very smart people laid out in books and the internet", but man, the music is so good.... Then again, it sure helps to know your way around in the world of audio production, just my own outlook on it all. So, a controller is either a midi controller which is a hands on solution with keys, faders and knobs/dials so you don't have to use your mouse or fingers on the screen in order to either play virtual instruments inside your computer/daw (digital audio work station) or to work on electronic music overall or a controller can be the hands on solution for a virtual mixer, like the softube 1 i believe it is called. A mixer is a mixing desk, plain and simple. Can be 2 channel or 96? 16, 24 or 48 are the most common and usually also called consoles in a studio setting, live mixing desk is what they are usually called in well, live sound for concerts. The main idea, you get all those channels of individual inputs (let's say rock concert): You have the drums: Bass drum ch 1, Snare dr on ch 2, hi hat on ch 3, Floor Tom on ch 4 and the 2 overheads (cymbals) on ch 5 + 6. Then the Bass Guitar on ch 7, the Guitars on ch 8 and ch 9, the Keyboards on 10 and the 2 vocals on ch 11 and 12. Now you can treat each instrument with gain, eq, and the final volume with the fader and sum them all up onto the stereo bus (mix bus) where they come out of the mixer and go into the speakers Left and Right for the audience to hear. There are several more steps of course, like you can divert a signal on their respective channel via the aux send into a reverb for instance. The vocal would be an obvious choice. So the signal still goes to the mix bus, but on the ch 11 and 12 you grab the signals, turn on their aux send, there it goes into the reverb, from the reverb it comes back onto a separate channel where you have the wet/effected signal only, also called the aux return, which you then can treat also and mix to the original, dry vocal accordingly. That channel too gets sent to the stereo bus, in order to be part of the whole mix. I will leave it at that for now, hope it is not too complicated already. An audio interface is simply the connection between a musician and his instruments and the computer. In order to record music, lets say a guitar, you have to have a trs input, in order to connect a microphone you need an xlr input and those are available in mostly 2 inputs, 4 inputs, 8 or 16 inputs, from there you have connections to your speakers and via usb mostly to your computer. Feel free to ask any questions, unless you think, "who is this idiot, trying to confuse me with his weird explanations?", hope i could help a little.

Ideally an empty room, but if it’s too much to haul your stuff out then I wouldn’t overly worry about it too much. I’ve done it both ways and I mean that stuff is gonna end up back in the room and have an affect anyway. So which ever is easier for you 🙂

No worries 🙂

lol and a large number of dislikes (for my channel anyway. I'm guessing those people didn't actually watch the video) Thanks btw =)

Hard to disagree about the title. It's a fine line coming up with title names that are enticing without being click-baity

Oh for sure!! 1000%

First off, OMFG your user name made my day!! =D I totally get what you're saying, but there are some parts I have to address, and I'm going to do so from a "content creators.... yuck" point of view. So first part is that studio designers are not the ones watching my videos. I'd wager that most of my viewers are beginner/intermediate and are most likely doing this in a spare room. Some might have the luxury to pick which room, others might only have one room and no other options. Also, how many of them are in a house that they own vs renting either a house or a small apartment? Someone who owns can do more to a space than someone who rents. Now unless someone can build a space from the ground up, the room is what is what it is. So unless one has the ability to change the size and dimensions of the room, we just can't escape the physics of said room. I mean unless you're a God lol. The main take away from the video that I wanted to get across is that no matter the space one is in, you need to find the most balanced spot in that room, AND THEN start with basic treatment. Every room will have a "sweet spot". It might not be a great sweet spot, but still a sweet spot none the less. Like I mentioned in the video, I'm in the corner of an L-Shaped room. The stairs coming to the basement are in this room, hence why it's L-Shaped. 3 walls are concrete as well so sound can only escape upwards. 92Hz almost vanishes in this spot, but if i lift or lower my head about a foot the issue is gone. The whole dip is between about 85-100Hz. There are other spots in this space that don't have this issue. But all of them have nothing below 80Hz. Like subs blasting or not there is nothing below 80. But in this corner I can hear down to 26Hz. Its not loud or boomy. It's actually pretty tight (could be a little better though) and the imaging in this spot is bang on. That gets to my point. I could have spent a fortune trying to hear anything below 80Hz, or just move my setup to a different spot in the room. Yes I have a dip centered at 92, but I know it's there and I just work around it. And I'd rather deal with a dip at 92 then having absolutely nothing below 80Hz. I picked my battle lol. So I'm just recommending others do the same. Find the best spot in their room and THEN start looking into treatment. Then they can get better results with less treatment. It's like painting a car. The best paint job money can buy is still going to be shit if the bodywork underneath is garbage. The other part I wanted to touch on is about not buying anything until your room is essentially "perfect". If that's your plan and what you want to do I have zero right to tell you otherwise. But I can't make a video telling people not to bother starting or doing anything until they have the perfect room. First off, there is no perfect room. If there was every large studio would already have it and they would all be identical. Each room will also have its limits. How much treatment can one put in a 8x10 room vs a 30x40 foot room? Andy Wallace could mix better in a subway bathroom than a beginner could in a million dollar control room. So experience will still always be the deciding factor. But obviously the better the space the easier things are. I can't disagree with that lol. At the end of the day we need to do what we can with our rooms, accept that each room will have a limit on what issues can and can't be fixed, and just get on with making music. I'd rather encourage others to do the best they can with what they've got and over time improve what they can then just be the video version of gear sluts and just tell everyone they are shit unless XYZ lol

@@EverythingMusicRecording I totally agree with that. Ultimately the room is the room.

Pretty much my friend. Make the best of our rooms until we can build or acquire a better room 🙂

Oh no!! The squaretangle room!! lol. If it sounds good then I'd say you might be best leaving it as is (I'm in the same boat in the corner of my "L" room) If there is too much absorption (assuming it can easily be taken down and put back up) try taking down a small amount and see if it helps. If not, put them back up. If it does, try taking down a little more. That's the BIG thing with trying to treat a home studio since most of us don't have the money to have an acoustician come in. Always just do a little bit at a time, whether adding or removing. The other big thing is knowing when to call it a day. Spare bedrooms were never meant to be studios, so we also have to be aware that we will only be able to take our rooms so far. No point spending a lifetime trying to get perfection out of a spare room. Even multi-million dollar studios have their issues =)

Then your listening position was wrong! 🙄

@@kadiummusic yeah I moved it forward and it helped. But Im constantly checking bass response with listening position. my back wall needed a ton of absorption regardless

1,000,000% Junkie XL is another who has ZERO acoustic treatment. He said he prefers the room to be very live like back when he was DJ'ing, and thats how he mixes. And Jack Joseph Puig's home studio breaks absolutely EVERY rule in "the book" and I think he might have invented some new rules just so he could obliterate them as well!!! lol And people will say "well they are pros, so they are allowed to do that". It's the same BS argument saying Andrew Scheps is allowed to mix on headphones, be we aren't allowed.... like.... ok.... I think some treatment helps, but everyone has to figure out what works best for them. But you are absolutely right. Knowing your monitors, headphones and room is paramount. Even if you spent $250 grand building a "perfectly" treated studio (of which no such room exists, even the best studios in the world have their issues) you still need to learn the room. Too many people would rather throw money at problems that can likely be solved by simply developing their skills and their ears, but thats never as "sexy" as shiny new gear =)

​@@EverythingMusicRecording You can absolutely work in an untreated room that you are familiar with, you'll get used to the dreaded peaks and nulls and 2 seconds low end sustain lol... But, if you are a commercial space facilitating multiple producers and mixing engineers, you absolutely need a properly treated room. You can't have 15db peak around 60hz having the producer thinking the kick drum is banging while in reality it doesn't, or vice versa, having a 15db dip making the producer/mixer work hard as hell to get it sound right and then realize their mix sounds boomy in the outside world... Even if the studio is properly treated, having lets say +/-5 db frequency response, as a mixer you'll still need to get used to a bit, but not as in an untreated bedroom... Not to mention how big of a problem that untreated room's low end frequency swing is making for people producing bass music genres... I have seen hundreds of people getting delusional about their low end because they can't hear shit in their space...

You are 100% correct my friend, and pro studios should absolutely be treated as best as possible. I think what many people with home studios forget is that pro studios are purpose-built and designed by a studio designer. A spare bedroom in a house is not. And even if you add treatment there is only so much you can add and so much you can do. It’s kinda like getting a 56 v-dub. I love old vw’s but there is nothing you can do to make it handle and drive like a modern Ferrari. Just like someone can make an awesome home studio, but it’s never going to be in the same league as Capital or Abbey Road. As for your comment about about low end and bass heavy genres and such, yes that can be tough to overcome. And when checking against pro mixes it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Years and years ago when the Rockband video game came out and the stems for the songs started showing up on the internet, that was the game changer for me (I have a giant folder full of everything I could get my hands on) because now I could actually take, say a Linkin Park song as an example, and listen to everything in solo. Suddenly you can solo just the kick and bass and hear how they interact, you can see and hear just how little low end most guitars have in them. Lol and the amount of headphone bleed in some of the vocal tracks is mind blowing. Anywho, you dissect and study enough of these tracks and everything just starts to make sense. I think that knowledge is far more valuable then acoustic treatment. I think treatment can just help make things a little easier. I really need to do a video about that…

I agree! I'm not building or don't know anything about mastering or recording, but I do know about home theater acoustics and what is needed to truly recreate a better than cinematic sound! All true HT enthusiasts that want the best sounding room know that no matter how high-end your equipment is, it's not worth shit in a room without proper and correct acoustic treatments! When you have a baffle wall behind an acoustically transparent screen combined of 3 LCR channels, multiple subwoofers, L&R wides, 2 surround, 2 rear channels, and 4 to 6 height/Atmos channels, add into that multiple rows, seating at different heights......if you don't have a room that the right shape and size...that's a bummer you don't get to have a home theater, but if you have the space and can frame out a trapagonal shape along with absorption, diffusion, bass traps and combination panels, placed at the correct reflection points based on your listening positions the room will sound infinitely better than if not treated!

​@@downersup2 Actually what you said was another topic that's related but not the same, cause studio monitor's design is kinda different compared to home theater/surround, or just any entertainment speakers. The main difference between studio monitor and theater/entertainment system is, entertainmet speaker/system was designed to fill the room with sound, where as studio monitor was designed to fill the person or space directly in front of it with sound. The former is to fill the room with sound, with primarily room sound and secondary direct sound, where as studio monitor is primarily direct sound and focusing on eliminating/minimizing the room sound. You can viewing it as speaker vs headphone comparison, opera house vs studio, or even truck vs ferrari. It's same category but different design and usage. There are many differences, 1st thing noticable to anyone is the power consumption. 2nd thing is the entertainment speaker usually had much further listening distance and angle such as 2-4 meters where as studio monitor only 3-4 feets with small pin point location both in vertically and horrizontally. So if you wanna dance or stretching while listening studio monitor, too bad~ 3rd thing is different sound design. Entertainment speaker focusing on making the sound immersive, therefore big/majestic sound. Where as studio monitor try to provide details and accurate sound, therefore high fidelity sound. 4th thing is room requirement. Due to 3rd thing's reason, entertainment speaker require more ideal space because higher power and coverage means more reflection/interference/room sound, where as studio monitor require less ideal space because pinpoint based sound transmission is much like headphone. As long as you had the positioning thing sorted out, the direct sound in anytime would be much bigger than reflection/room sound, hence make it much more viable in medium to small room personal listening, assuming you understand what you are doing. 5th thing is colouration, usually entertainment speaker had their signature colouration in frequency response. While studio monitor also had their own slight colouration, they tend to focusing more on transparency and perfect control of their speaker. The biggest difference perhaps shown by their subwoofer, usually home theater favored 10 inch or bigger sub for explosive booming effect, while studio monitor favored 8 inch with solid, refined, elegant and less boomy sub. 6th thing is usage purpose. Entertainment speaker is used for personal or family size entertainment, where as studio monitor is used as examine recording, mixing/mastering from a specific location. In conclusion, you can get reasonably hi-fi performance in untreated room with studio monitor, assuming you know what you doing and not in an extreme room environment (such as bathroom sized room). Due to their design, I think unless you go professional, any extensive wood/opera house or studio liked acoustic treatment is too excessive. IMO just perfect your positioning 1st, and using microphone calibration method along with equaliser and minimal acoustic treatment if you still unsatisfied with the result. I'm not saying there will not be improvements or differences. Just like you're using the studio monitor listening to song recording from proper opera house versus recording in studio, the differences would be as apparent as night and day. What I'm saying is the extremity of the best majestic sound (royal opera house liked experience) and the best transparent sound (most expensive studio liked experience) are more like a preferences rather than a requirement. With a proper setup studio monitor and little calibration you can get best of both world, a reasonably natural and majestic hi-fi sound.

@@LEEKING2005 You bring up some very interesting points, and much of your response I was able to learn some stuff! I think the disconnect is the guy who made the video and you are referencing more the mastering of 2 channel stereo hifi musical tracks as opposed to what I was talking about, using home theater as my baseline! But...even in many reference level music mastering/recording studios I see quite a few large non-neutral sounding speakers, that aren't necessarily studio monitors! It's very true the placement of speakers, especially in stereo listening is important for imaging, but some of the best music ever has been recorded and mastered on a speakers like B&W, M&K, and JBL, many of which are used in residential listening rooms and dedicated home theaters! It's true in a studio the speakers are much closer to the MLP and don't typically don't require crazy giant ported infrasonic subwoofers, but to say many studios use nice 8" speakers is kinda disingenuous.....active high-end studio monitors like ATC SCM110A 3-way have a 9" woofer just in the monitor enclosure, and the accompanying subwoofer being 12" - 15"! If you're talking 2 channel, sure I'll trust that you know what you're talking about when it comes to studio acoustics, and you it's logical that a small room with well positioned monitors can be a doable solution! I do wonder what happens when a sound engineer, producer or whoever handles the mastering of movies where the director could intend for a Dolby Atmos mix and has the ability to create 32 discrete channels!? You can only master that by having a studio with those channels setup in surround configuration, which is impossible to be done correctly without the studio room being acoustically treated. To what extent...I don't know, but some of the studios I've seen that do the mastering of the Dolby Atmos or DTS:X are in fairly large rooms, much more so than studios that master music! The movie mastering studios with extremely high channels counts, I've seen using floor to ceiling, wooden diffusion walls, and quite a bit of diffusion and absorption overhead! Such as Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN....that's about the most acoustic treatment I've seen in a fairly large room! Either way, I think this was a good discussion, and welcome any further knowledge/advice that you have for me!!

@@downersup2 I think you're kinda confused by my last reply. I'm not "referencing more the mastering of 2 channel stereo hifi musical tracks as opposed to what you was talking about, using home theater as my baseline!" Actually I'm comparing the differential acoustic treatment for a "Majestic sound" and a "Transparent sound". It's just coincidentally it's the same difference design philosophy for entertainment speaker and studio monitor speaker. Also placement/positioning is not only for stereo imaging, it's also about the attack, equalisation, muddyness and much much more. It's like if you make a speech in a large untreated large hall, it's not just the stereo imaging that your ear cannot differentiate, it's the whole speech becoming uncomprehandable, in an extreme environment (such as too big or too small). Also the 8 inch and above 10 inch subwoofer comparison are also wrong. It's the philosophy of filling the room with sound and filling a position with sound. Bass is the most room acoustic treatment/room space demanding sound, in term of transparency. Cause 40 Hz typically need 8.575 meter space to travel for one sine wave cycle, or it will create constructive and destructive interference with itself. So for transparency matter it's actually not great to adding the extra inertia of a bigger subwoofer. You can hear the difference of the inertia in term of the boominess of a bass, usually 10 inches above subwoofer will have some dificulty of handling 50-120hz accurately due to their cone recovery time. In your example it's 9 inch subwoofer and a 13 inch super low subwoofer, the super low subwoofer I think only handle the frequency below the 9 inch subwoofer, hence accuracy is not a problem. I wouldn't say super deep subwoofer won't add anything interesting in your music, but for normal size room and not a very huge room/hall, the 8 inch bass on moderate listening level are already overkill for your room to handle. Like i said, a 32 channels or a pair of audiophile grade full range stereo speaker are kind personal preferences. It all depending if you want a majestic sound or a transparent sound. The reason you see both in studio is because they thinking they want both. Ofcourse they would priminarily testing their mixing and mastering on the transparency system, but it doens't mean they can't entertaining themselve of get an inspiration/ second opinion of their music in a entertainment speaker. Also IMO i don't think you should including movie studio in audiophile or high fidelity discussion. Cause i think movie studio's audio is all about supplying loud/immersive experience to a bigger hall in different position. In that extreme condition, they often praticing using artificial setup/equaliser/extreme dynamic such as dolby atmos to create unnaturally immersive environment for large audience(often to hundreds). And behind that extreme objective, it's often the transparency/fidelity they sacrify. The best they can do is something like a royal opera house, but even at a opera house cost design, they only support single audio source (the stage) and not 32 channels as you would like.

Lol I read the first sentence and thought “oh god, not again…” A couple months ago someone commented along the lines of “as soon as I saw those Yamahas on their side I knew I wasn’t going to listen to a thing this guy says” and I thought I was about to get another one lol. Like you I prefer them on their sides as well. Even going back to NS10’s you see some guys have them standing up, some guys have them on their sides. It’s really one of those “who cares?” things. But trolls will be trolling lol How do you like the sit/stand desk in a studio? I need to build a nice desk one day and I’ve ponder going this route.

@@EverythingMusicRecording I’m still customizing the desk and finishing up the néw room within a room build. So far I love it. I think for mixing and mastering lowering the desk all the way down to minimize buildup and reflections from the desk it’s self is going to be another advantage I didn’t think about initially. Love being able to stand while being creative when audio isn’t as crucial.

That sounds awesome!! I’d love to build something better one day (I’m in a rental so I’m limited) and if I could manage a room in a room even better. Maybe I’ll consider a standing desk a little more now. Where do you have the studio pics posted? Leave me your Instagram handle if you want 🙂

Acoustic treatment is good, and needed, hard to argue that. But why buy more than you need? Lots of issues can be fixed just by moving speakers, or finding a better spot in the room. Once that is sorted out then acoustic treatment will be more affective and one likely won’t need quite as much 🙂

well but arent you just trying to justify the catchy name for the video? cause you are not really saying acoustic treatment is pointless, you are separating the first order in business of a.t. from a.t. itself. yes, organizing your room goes first hand, but that doesnt make acoustic room pointless, it just makes most promoted sponsored shill videos pointless which would be the point i would have driven home

Unfortunately titles need to dance that very fine line between catchy and clickbait, while trying not to be actual clickbait. No different than news article headlines and such. But I do see your point. But on the flip side acoustic treatment is pointless when going blindly into it. And in many cases just simply moving things around a little can make a bigger difference and require less treatment. 🙂

@@EverythingMusicRecording I do wanna make clear your video was very helpful and enlightening for me, so thanks for putting this out there! i have a durlock wall on a side and an extwrior wall on the other, so it was a rpetty big "duh" moment for me yesterday watching this. so thank you! a sub earned

@@EverythingMusicRecordingis good and NEEDED? Sorry… what about “needed” is pointless. They’re essentially opposite terms… stop making clickbait titles that you have to cover up with sidestepping confirmation. If you want a catchy title, try “Do you need acoustic treatment?” See, the question keeps you from being judged. This title might get more engagement, but it will lose you followers for life.

LOL!! I'd never use that clip in any way to make fun of Greta. But from a comedic standpoint sometimes that clip is just too perfect =)